Helen, Assist Me: Ought to I Be Cooking with Ostrich Eggs?

Hen flu has made shopping for hen eggs so unpredictable! Costs are excessive, after which they’re decrease once more; grocery-store cabinets are naked, however solely generally! Are there eggs from different birds that you just’d suggest? I’ve heard {that a} single ostrich egg is large enough to make an omelette for a complete household. —Nameless, N.Y.C.

Eight years in the past, within the dreamy days when hen eggs price pennies and everybody was blissful on a regular basis, I entered a fugue state and acquired an emu egg for twenty-five {dollars} at a Brooklyn Entire Meals. It was a couple of days earlier than Thanksgiving dinner, which I might be internet hosting at my house for a dozen and a half assorted kin, and I used to be in a near-manic state of prep purchasing, fridge group, and oven-sequencing technique. The emu egg—a two pound, eight-inch ovoid with a sultry teal shell gently speckled in pale inexperienced—appeared like simply the precise absurdist last flourish for an already insane endeavor. A single emu egg has the quantity of roughly a dozen of its chicken-born analogues: ought to I make an infinite pound cake? A gallon of hollandaise? A deviled egg as massive because the Ritz? In the long run, simplicity prevailed when one among my cousins sensibly instructed that we maintain on to the egg for brunch the day after Thanksgiving. Arduous-boiled and sliced, the egg could be the perfect dimension for a bagel topping—breakfast sandwiches made barely jurassic.

Cooking the emu egg was a enjoyable little gimmick that I would by no means do once more. Do you know that it takes about an hour and a half to hard-boil an emu egg? Do you know that, when hard-boiled, the yolk is a chartreuse-tinged chalky white? That the albumen, subjected to the identical cooking technique, isn’t opaque white however has a type of snowy, snotlike translucence? I do know these items now. It tasted tremendous, as soon as all of us obtained previous the uncanny-valley horror of one thing that was, and but was not, only a very, very massive regular egg.

I inform this story to not put you off contemplating the potential of various eggs however for example that egginess isn’t a universally fungible high quality, and the eggs of different chook species differ in methods past quantity. I did sometimes marvel if issues would have turned out extra thrillingly with the emu egg if I’d been extra formidable and gone for one thing like a comfortable scramble with cream and chives, or a dramatically tonsured comfortable boil—with a cereal bowl as an egg cup, and a whole battalion of toast troopers. Not way back, motivated by nostalgia and a want for emotional redress—and, talking to your query, a want to scale back my reliance on the beleaguered hen egg—I really appeared up the value of emu eggs and was shocked to study that they’ve been tipping previous sixty bucks apiece! Certainly, egg costs have risen throughout the category Aves on account of inflation. So I wouldn’t suggest shopping for various eggs as any type of sensible measure—particularly now that chicken-egg costs appear to be coming down. However only for the hell of it? Positively.

Proper now, we’re reaching the tip of emu laying season, however the emu’s cousin, the ostrich, tends to put on the hotter finish of spring and thru the summer season. Ostrich eggs are about twice the quantity of an emu egg, and have a white shell; you should purchase one on-line proper now at costs starting from fifty {dollars} to $299.99. Honestly, although, I believe there’s simply as a lot drama, and a complete lot extra enjoyable, to be present in cutting down. Itsy-bitsy quail eggs are cute as all getout, with brown-speckled shells. Every is a couple of third the quantity of a hen egg. Not like the eggs of their behemothic brethren, quail eggs are in fairly regular demand by eating places and different high-end establishments, so that they’re comparatively straightforward to seek out. A shocking proportion of New York grocery shops tends to hold them—and never simply the fancy-pants markets! They’ve obtained them at my native!—shelved proper subsequent to the hen eggs in clear plastic cartons of eighteen, usually priced round 5 {dollars}. Right here, once more, the perfect transfer is to not fold the eggs into cake batter or whip them right into a meringue. (Are you able to think about the tedium of separating out all these tiny yolks?) You need to serve them in a means that emphasizes their foolish, marvellous little-ness. I like to boil quail eggs—prepare dinner them for about three minutes, then shock them in ice water to halt the cooking course of, which makes them simpler to peel and preserves the tenderness of the yolk. Serve them merely sliced in half lengthwise, 1,000,000 of them on a plate—an Argos of yellow eyes—with a little bit of salt and scorching sauce on the aspect.

I’m additionally keen on duck eggs and goose eggs: these are miracles of flavorful, fatty yolks, simply findable at Asian supermarkets. Cook dinner and eat them simply as you’ll a hen egg, although relying on the recipe you’re enterprise, you may discover that the flavour is slightly rounder, the colour slightly richer. The yolks are each bigger and fattier than these of hen eggs, making them a dream for baking (akin to utilizing higher-butterfat European butter quite than commonplace American stuff). The yolks additionally make for magnificent, lusty, sunshine-yellow pasta; if you wish to attempt it out earlier than you set within the work your self, swing by Maxi’s on Mott Road, an unbeatable Hong Kong-style restaurant that tends to attract main crowds round lunchtime, and get a bowl of the duck-egg noodles in a wealthy pork-bone broth. ♦